Nano Porous Anodic Aluminum Oxide: An Overview on its Fabrication and Potential Applications

The quick development in nanotechnology has raised the status of this modern technology owing to the decrease in the sizes of structures and devices. There has been considerable dispute concerning the future consequences of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology has the probable ability to design many new and novel materials and devices in smaller dimensions with broad-range applications in medicine, electronics and sustainable energy production. Nano porous anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) films consisting of self-organized hexagonal arrays of invariable parallel nanochannels have been widely applied as the building block to fabricate various functional nanostructures of different morphologies such as nanoparticles, nanowires and nanotubes. These functional nanostructures can be potentially utilized in various applications like magnetic storage media, optoelectronics, bio/chemical sensors, photonics and plasmonics. This chapter describes the different fabrication processes of AAO films in detail along with citation of a few interesting applications.

Keywords: Anodic aluminum oxide, Aluminum, Anodization, Electrochemical replication, Hard anodization, Hexagonal, Nanotechnology, Nanostructures, Nano porous, Nanochannels, Nanoimprint lithography, Plasmonics, Self-organization, Surface-enhanced Raman scattering, SERS substrates.